“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next,” the apocryphal saying goes. Given this, it’s notable that the “Left” has long controlled American education. (E.g., Democrats outnumber Republicans among college professors by almost nine to one.) But this left-wing schoolroom domination and indoctrination are going to end — if President-elect Donald Trump has his way.
In fact, Trump has announced plans that are meant, in essence, to make education great again. These include purging wokeness from colleges and eliminating the unconstitutional Department of Education.
As The Wall Street Journal reported Monday:
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to remake education in the U.S., pledging to exert more control over funding and classroom lessons, to curb what he views as left-leaning tendencies at universities and even to dismantle the Department of Education.
If his White House delivers on those promises, more families could get money to send kids to private school. Schools would face pressure to limit accommodations for transgender students and to end some initiatives aimed at addressing racial disparities [read: effecting anti-white/Asian discrimination in education].
The goals are at once ambitious and controversial.
“There are a lot of very smart people who are very excited to get into positions where we can actually start making change happen,” said Tiffany Justice, a Trump ally and the co-founder of the conservative parents group Moms for Liberty.
Taking the Reins
As to this, Trump had formulated his reforms long ago. In a 2023 video that went viral earlier this week, he outlined plans to address rampant college political correctness. Stating that the vehicle through which this could be accomplished is the “college accreditation system,” he said:
Tuition costs at colleges and universities have been exploding … while academics have been obsessed with indoctrinating America’s youth.
… When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again…. These standards will include defending the American tradition, Western Civilization, protecting Free Speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly, removing all Marxist diversity equity and inclusion bureaucrats, offering options for accelerated and low cost degrees, providing meaningful job placement and career services, and implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money’s worth.
Furthermore I will direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination….
Trump explained that institutions that continue discriminating unjustly will be subject to fines and having their endowments taxed. (Video below.)
In reality, of course, the federal government has no constitutional mandate to be involved in education. If it’s going to be, however — and it currently is, six ways to Sunday — it should effect good, not evil.
No Exaggeration
While Trump certainly speaks bluntly (part of his appeal) and can be hyperbolic, he’s not exaggerating about education’s sad state. Of course, you wouldn’t know this listening to some in the media. Just consider the following Tuesday HuffPost headline: “Trump Will Bring The School Culture Wars To Every State.” Excuse me? Who’s bringing the culture war to every state?
In fact, who did so long ago?
To glean insight into this, consider some facts. As I wrote in “Diploma Disaster?” citing information from “The Dirty Dozen: America’s Most Bizarre and Politically Correct College Courses” (12/9/2006):
[A]cademia has descended into course offerings such as “The Phallus,” “Queer Musicology,” “Border Crossings, Borderlands: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Immigration,” “Whiteness: The Other Side of Racism,” “Native American Feminisms,” “Sex Change City: Theorizing History in Genderqueer San Francisco,” and “Lesbian Pulp Fiction,” as the truth gets stranger and stranger all the time.
Then, as I related in 2018’s “Craziness in Kids’ Classes,” one
teacher’s students at Rockingham Middle School in North Carolina last year were expected to issue one [an apology] — standing in front of the class — for being white and Christian and having the “privilege” that supposedly bestows….
Note here, too, that the above are a minute sampling of the lunacy permeating modern education. But here’s the question: Who introduced this corruption?
Was it the Christian Coalition? Moms for Liberty? The Heritage Foundation?
The so-called “Left” did, of course. Its Gramscian “long march through the institutions” is why schools indoctrinate children with notions of “white privilege” and “white supremacy”; with critical race theory; with anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Western ideas; with “transgender” ideology and sexual perversion generally; and with notions about “toxic masculinity”; and why schools embrace pseudo-intellectual innovations such as DEI.
Flipping the Script
What happens, though, is this: Leftists will introduce some bizarre new idea or pedagogy and quickly mainstream it. Conservatives will respond, albeit usually a bit late, and merely defend what had been long-standing status quo. It is then that, for mounting a defense, they’re accused of taking offensive action — of “starting a culture war.” For trying to extinguish fires the Left maniacally lit, conservatives are accused of being arsonists.
The Department of (Mis)Education?
But what of Trump’s other ambition, dismantling the Department of Education (DoE)? HuffPo is in a tizzy over it. “If Trump were able to abolish it,” the site warns, “it would spell disaster for the entire country.” My, methinks HuffPo has been bonked on the pinhead by Chicken Little’s acorn.
Now, most Americans perceive that education has deteriorated markedly the last 60 years. In fact, a study I read approximately 20 to 25 years back found that even then, a college degree was the equivalent of only a 1947 high school diploma. But question: In the pre-1960s days of superior schooling, did the DoE exist?
The agency wasn’t created until 1979, in fact — a birth followed by decades more of declining education. Put differently, correlation ain’t exactly on the DoE’s defenders’ side.
Besides, eliminating the Department of Education doesn’t eliminate the “department of education.” That is, every state has it’s own department of education; large cities and many smaller ones do, too. We consequently have probably hundreds of education departments nationwide. Now, question:
Why do we need this wasteful replication?
Why have different levels of government all doing the same thing — and sometimes contradicting one another?
Obviously, New York can determine school standards for New Yorkers via its education department. And Mississippi can determine school standards for Mississippians via its education department. Ditto for all other states. There’s an added bonus, too:
State-level education management is constitutional.
Speaking of which, Trump, his supporters, and conservatives do have a (sometimes inner) conflict. On the one hand, they understandably want to slay the wokeness corrupting America’s children. On the other, many of them realize schooling is a state function. It’s an ever-present problem in a time in which, because education has been brought low, statism is status quo.
